What is UV unwraping and what do the different unwrap options mean? In what ways can we cheat unwrapping?
When you want to use a texture on a object than you may need to unwrap faces, yes you can live without it in the beginning.

How it works: Blender has a dedicated layout for upwraping, follow the menu below:
 

If you want to skip the UV mapping, you can apply the materials (a solid color) on object.